


Wait

by evilythedwarf



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-18
Updated: 2011-10-18
Packaged: 2017-10-24 18:14:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilythedwarf/pseuds/evilythedwarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, then you don’t care about their pain, you don’t care about their suffering, you just care about how you’d feel if you were, say, dying."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wait

**Author's Note:**

> This is... kinda possible, I would guess.

They sit in silence, next to each other but not touching. House crosses his bad leg on top of the good one and Cameron rests her head against the wall behind them.

“You do know empathy is the ultimate form of selfishness, right?”

“Not now House,” she tells him. She doesn’t even open her eyes. She’s used to it, used to him.

“If you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, then you don’t care about their pain, you don’t care about their suffering, you just care about how you’d feel if you were, say, dying.”

“She’s not going to die.” Not today, she thinks, not today but soon and there’s nothing anyone can do for her except to try and numb the pain.

“Yes, she is.”

She’d ask him why he’s here, if he doesn’t care, why he’s in a waiting room and why his knuckles turn white as he grips his cane. She’d ask him, except those would be empty questions, even emptier than his own words because he cares, he’s just unable to admit it. That's what she chooses to believe anyway.

She throws a hand over her eyes, trying to keep some light out, reveling in the few seconds of darkness she’ll allow herself before standing up and walking into a dying woman’s room, with its bright fluorescent lights, robbing everything of color and turning skin so pale it looks drained of blood.

She takes a deep breath and keeps the air inside a few seconds, steeling herself for what she’ll do next. The pink scrubs hang loose around her as she stands, and she looks small and young. Blonde hair makes her look skinnier, House has told her, but she’s sure it's due to the fact that her last real meal was around two months ago.

Fellows come and go, somebody told her the first day she crossed PPTH, and she believed it then but forgot it later, when she’d been in the same office for three years and it was finally time to say goodbye. She remembered the day she broke up with Chase, the day she went to her old office and realized that nothing was the same except for a couple of red mugs somebody had left on the sink. She remembered the day Hadley walked into her ER and she realized she hadn’t seen her in two years.

She misses a step, sleep messing with her equilibrium, but she doesn’t fall because House is there, holding her arm. She feels old, all of a sudden. Ten years ago, she thinks, I would have blushed if he’d touched me, I would have stammered a thank you and lowered my eyes and now I don’t even want to talk to him.

Whatever feelings she had for him before have become nothing but a dull buzz in the back of her head; always there, always messing with the quiet in her mind, a constant reminder of a previous time but too indefinite to really matter.

“Thanks,” she makes herself tell him.

“Whatever.”

She steps into the room and grabs the chart – force of habit. Stats haven’t changed in the past hour, she turns to tell him but she only catches a shadow on the doorframe. She smiles, knowing he’ll be back later. She’ll pretend to be asleep while he checks Hadley’s chart and only stir after he leaves so he can pretend he wasn’t there at all.


End file.
